YMMV / Treasure Planet

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• Angst? What Angst?: Lampshaded by Silver when he throws away the treasure to save Jim.
  Jim: Silver! You gave up—!
  Silver: Just a lifelong obsession, Jimbo. I'll get over it.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Despite good critical reception, its financial failure ended up kick-starting Disney's second biggest career-low.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Often cited as the reason for this film's failure at the box office. Instead of making a straightforward adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel or an updated futuristic space opera with spaceships, the film tries to do both and ends up with wooden galleons flying through space and aliens dressed like 18th Century Europeans. A lot of critics found this mixture of two completely different settings too bizarre, despite having some praise for the story and characters.
• Awesome Music:
  • "I'm Still Here" and "Always Know Where You Are". Provided by John Rzeznik.
  • James Newton Howard delivers a gorgeous soundtrack as well. Particular mention goes to "The Launch", "Jim Saves The Crew" and "Silver Leaves".
  • Álex Ubago's Spanish rendition of "I'm Still Here" in the European Spanish dub.
  • The Bulgarian rendition of "I'm Still Here." See below for the significance.
  • the French version sung by David Hallyday, is no less poignant.
• Base-Breaking Character: B.E.N.. Viewers will either find him hilarious or just annoying.
• Broken Base:
  • Reviewers and Disney fans either find this movie an underrated and ambitious classic that should have been more successful or a bizarre and rather boring failed experiment.
  • Perhaps the most divisive aspect of the film and what's likely going to make it or break it for a lot of people is the overall setting, which combines the Wooden Ships and Iron Men setting of the original Treasure Island with a sci-fi Space Opera setting. Some find it to be an incredibly cool, distinctive and creative setting that makes it stand out from other adaptations of Treasure Island, while others find the mix of two inherently opposing settings to be too bizarre, confusing and off-putting for it to work.
• Catharsis Factor: After Scroop was so much of an untethered psychopath throughout the movie, seeing him get sucked out into space—the same fate he sent Mr. Arrow to earlier— is an unbelievably cheer-worthy and cathartic moment.
• Common Knowledge: Some fans claim Amelia and Delbert are either both from One Gender Races or are actually the same species, making them an example of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism. However, if you look closely at the background in Doppler's observatory, a few of the paintings have female Dog Men, so Doppler's species is not a One-Gender Race and he's not the same species as Amelia. The Licensed Game Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon may have started this misconception, as all the Canids (Doppler's species) were male and all the Felinids (Amelia's species) were female.
• Complete Monster: Scroop is the most bloodthirsty member of John Silver's mutineers. Completely lacking in his boss's standards and redeeming qualities, Scroop introduces himself nearly killing fifteen-year-old cabin boy Jim Hawkins for mouthing off to him. When first mate Mr. Arrow reins Scroop in, Scroop pays him back later by sadistically cutting the lifeline keeping Arrow from falling into a black hole, then pins the blame on Jim just to hurt him even more. Scroop constantly seeks to undermine Silver's authority over him so he can kill off the crew of the R.L.S. Legacy, and meets his end attempting to doom Jim to a slow death in the vacuum of the Etherium: "Do say hello to Mr. Arrow!"
• Crossover Ship:
  • Amelia with Jane Porter, as both have quite a lot in common: posh British accents, traveling by ship, and even somewhat similar body types (they share an animator in Ken Duncan).
  • Jim is a Launcher of a Thousand Ships, and almost all of them involve girls from other stories. To give a non-exhaustive list, there are: Ariel and Melody), Odette, and even anime girls like Sailor Moon and Princess Tutu. On the crossover slashy side, there are Sinbad, Aladdin, or Dimitri.
• Cult Classic: Considered by fans to be a forgotten Disney classic, and like The Black Cauldron and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, they are patiently waiting for the day when Disney chooses to retry this one for one of their live-action remakes.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Captain Amelia, partially due to being the major token girl in the film, considering that there was a severe lack of female characters in the original Robert Louis Stevenson novel, mostly because she's a badass, snarky, Lady of War. That and other reasons.
  • Scroop, Silver's nightmarishly creepy Dragon, despite not having that much screentime before being booted off into space, is well-remembered by fans for his menacing voice, cool design, and successfully murdering Mr. Arrow onscreen.
  • Captain Flint has even less screentime than Scroop, but he sure makes a hell of an impression with his creepy design and sheer viciousness.
  • Another one of Silver's pirate crew is the Fat Bastard Grewnge/Meltdown, whom some fans view as a Big Handsome Man along with his Crowning Moment of Awesome of shooting the asteroids with his BFG.
• Estrogen Brigade: Jim himself has perhaps one of biggest collection of fangirls out of all the Disney human males. His character design, his Troubled, but Cute personality, his smarts and action scenes, and the fact that he's voiced by a now big time celebrity Joseph Gordon-Levitt and is one of the rare handsome Disney heroes that remains single all factor into this, even with the fact that he's 15-years-old (probably because he certainly doesn't look that young.)
• Evil Is Cool:
  • He's a Disney villain, so, duh, but Scroop certainly works overtime for that role. A giant sociopathic spider-monster with the gravelly-smooth voice of Michael Wincott? Yup, he fits.
  • Long John Silver has always fallen under this, and it goes double for this version since he's a cyborg and a genuinely charming and sympathetic Anti-Villain.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The fact that there exists a canon plot for the sequel that was never made, certainly has some fans taking and running with it. Fan works of Kate, who would have been Jim's Love Interest (a cute human-looking alien with lion-like features) aren't hard to find, while the most popular scenario, whether inspired by the abandoned sequel or not, is usually to have Jim and Silver reunite again.
  • What if Jim had taken Silver up on his offer to join him at the end?
• Fanon: Fanfic writers have given Captain Amelia the surname "Smollett" after the captain from the original story.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Fans of this movie are almost universally fans of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and vice versa, thanks to both of them being Steampunk Disney adventure movies with a greater focus on action than on music and comedy that subsequently didn't do well at the box office but are now widely regarded as ahead of their time and frequently top lists of the most underrated Disney movies. The later Disney film Strange World would join here being a film with a similar style. Other non-Disney films that are part of these Friendly Fandoms include fellow cult classics from the era Titan A.E., Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
  • It also has one with Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty for showcasing space pirates with stunning effects. The first Ratchet & Clank game also came out in November 2002.
• Genius Bonus: Etherium, the substance that fills the space between the planets, the stuff that ships fly through, is based on a "real" element of 19th century physics, Ether, believed (by some, to this day) to be the medium light travels through instead of what is now normally taken for "empty space". The concept, once taken for granted, is now only known to those who study 19th century physics (and serious Steampunk fans).
• Ho Yay: Silver and Jim's emotionally intense relationship has definitely garnered them a following.
• It Was His Sled: It's Treasure Island IN SPACE! with Steampunk elements — a story that most everybody knows by heart, regardless of whether they've actually read the book. The film does add its own twists and ideas here and there, but as it's otherwise impressively faithful to the book, don't expect any major surprises.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Jim has been paired up with Kate (his love interest in the cancelled sequel), every Disney girl ever (particularly Ariel and Melody) non-Disney girls like Odette and even anime girls like Sailor Moon and Princess Tutu. Ironically he's a Celibate Hero in the movie. He's also shipped a lot with Silver, and on the crossover slashy side, Sinbad, Aladdin, or Dimitri are popularly shipped with him. Let's just say for a film featuring one of Disney's (Renaissance-onward) rare celibate heroes, the fans really like the idea of him finding more adventures out there.
• LGBT Fanbase: Despite Captain Amelia being straight in the film proper, she is quite popular amongst lesbian and bisexual woman, with some outright admitting to her being their Closet Key.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • John Silver is a jovial, honorable Cyborg doubling as a pirate captain in his lifelong quest to find the titular "Treasure Planet" housing the legendary treasure of Nathaniel Flint. Tracking down the map to Treasure Planet on the planet Montressor, Silver burns down an inn seeking the map, and later insinuates himself and his pirate crew to join the RLS Legacy on its own expedition to find Treasure Planet. Casting himself as a lowly grub cook to avoid suspicion, all while growing close to the young man in possession of the map, Jim Hawkins, Silver eventually orchestrates a mutiny, taking over the Legacy and holding its crew hostage to force Jim to help Silver decipher the map. Successfully finding Flint's treasure, Silver ends up sacrificing the unending troves of gold and jewels to save Jim's life, having grown to genuinely care for him as a surrogate son, and slips away at the end of the film with no punishment for his crimes, utterly content and happy with the fact that his quest for riches instead lead him into a friendship with Jim — even giving Jim the final parting gift of Silver's treasured pet Morph.
  • Captain Nathaniel Flint was the most accomplished and most feared space pirate in the history of the Etherium. In life, Flint made away with enough ill-gotten loot to fill the core of an entire planet, and in death, Flint's trove became the eye of every treasure hunter in the cosmos. Not even the shrewd and cunning Silver and his band of pirates are ultimately able to make off with his treasure, as Flint was so thorough in rigging Treasure Planet with death traps to ensure the treasure stayed his, even post-mortem, that only a few doubloons survive. Even as a decaying skeleton, Flint is the only one ever able to truly appreciate his hard-earned treasure, a testament to the pirate whose greed was so vast that he made his name a literal legend.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The animation frame of Jim turning to Morph. You know the one.◊
  • The shot of Silver vaguely hinting at what cost him his limbs◊ is quite popular on Imgur as a response to another picture◊ whenever 2B is mentioned.
• Moral Event Horizon: We get the idea that Scroop is a nasty guy, but then he proves it even more by gleefully sending Mr. Arrow to his death via black hole, only to turn around and place the blame entirely on Jim. In the end, Jim sends him tumbling into space in a similar manner.
  Scroop: Do say hello to Mr. Arrow for me.
  Jim: Tell him yourself!
• No Yay: There exists people who ship Jim/Silver romantically, which is considered this trope by others when their relationship in the film is that of a father/son one (even disregarding that, Silver appears to be in his forties if not fifties, while Jim is 15, making him a minor).
• Older Than They Think:
  • By sheer coincidence, a Bulgarian animated film titled Planetata na Sakrovishtata ("The Treasure Planet"), also an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel set in space, predates this movie by exactly twenty years. It's notable for being the first full-length animated feature to come out of Bulgaria, and also for being unnervingly bizarre.
  • People often point to this film and the much later Strange World as prime examples of Disney intentionally sabotaging the release of their own films. But Treasure Planet is not even the first time this has occurred. Disney intentionally sabotaged the release of Martin Scorsese's Kundun after it angered the Chinese government and resulted in Disney getting banned from releasing their films in China for five years, as well as Martin Scorsese not being allowed to step foot in China until 2012. Disney essentially buried the film to make amends with the Chinese government. To this day, Kundun cannot be streamed legally anywhere (in a similar case as the infamous Song of the South), and the film was only released on Blu-ray in 2018, and it was sub-licenced to Kino Lorber rather than being released in-house from Disney.
• One-Scene Wonder: Flint's crew members from the opening scene, particularly the insectoid crew member who swings toward a ship on a rope while carrying sabers with multiple arms and sporting a Slasher Smile.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Nautical puns aside, there's a substantial portion of fans that ship Captain Amelia with Jim's mom. No, we're not quite sure how it started either, aside from the obvious reasons.
• Signature Scene: Silver's encouraging speech to Jim ("You got the makings of greatness in ya'!") is often remembered by fans as the most heartwarming and iconic scene of the movie, and a go-to speech for many needing uplifting words in their own real lives. It's doubly heartwarming when director John Musker apparently based it on a real life speech he'd received as a young boy from his football coach that ended with both of them in tears.
• Spiritual Adaptation: This is as close as we'll ever come to a Spelljammer movie. Or an Edge Chronicles movie, for that matter.
• Theme Pairing: Jane from Tarzan and Captain Amelia are similar characters — cultured women with 18th-19th century aesthetics and British accents. Illuminated has them as its main pairing.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Scroop is easily the most distinctive and characterized of Silver's pirate crew, and the writers seem to hint that he'll play Starscream given Silver's increasingly sympathetic nature and Scroop's clear dissatisfaction with following orders. Aside from killing Mr. Arrow and a fight with Jim, Scroop doesn't do much, and he doesn't even make it to the climax.
  • The film doesn't do all that much with Mr. Arrow, which for some, makes his death fall flat.
• Uncertain Audience: The film's Steampunk Space Is Magic setting, mixing futuristic and traditional aspects, came across as incongruous to many viewers and critics, despite having some praise for the story and characters.
• Ugly Cute: Morph's basically a wrinklier floating Ditto, but you can't help but go "Awww!" whenever you see him.
• Vindicated by History: Was a Box Office Bomb at the time of its release, but it managed to gather a loyal fanbase over time and is now regarded by many as a forgotten Disney classic.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Much like The Iron Giant, the blending of traditional and computer animation in the whole movie, especially the space sequences is amazing. Especially with Silver, a hand drawn character, and his CG robotic arm, leg and eye.
• Win Back the Crowd: Like Atlantis: The Lost Empire before it, it tries to draw in an adult crowd with its highly thematic sci-fi settings and story, along with fantastical effects and large amounts of action along the way. It received considerably higher praise than the aforementioned film but not enough to secure success at the box office. History, however, has proven kinder to it, and it's now a beloved Cult Classic.
• The Woobie:
  • Jim could easily fall into woobie status, given his Disappeared Dad, stressful home life, and the unbelievable amount of abuse he receives throughout the film.
  • Morph resembles a kicked puppy when Silver tells Jim that he only cares about the treasure.

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